Political misinformation poses a major threat to democracies worldwide, often inciting intense disputes between opposing political groups. Despite its central role for informed electorates and political decision making, little is known about how aware people are of whether they are right or wrong when distinguishing accurate political information from falsehood. Here, we investigate people's metacognitive insight into their own ability to detect political misinformation. We use data from a unique longitudinal study spanning 12 waves over 6 months that surveyed a representative U.S. sample (N = 1,191) on the most widely circulating political (mis)information online. Harnessing signal detection theory methods to model metacognition, we found that people from both the political left and the political right were aware of how well they distinguished accurate political information from falsehood across all news. However, this metacognitive insight was considerably lower for Republicans and conservatives-than for Democrats and liberals-when the information in question challenged their ideological commitments. That is, given their level of knowledge, Republicans' and conservatives' confidence was less likely to reflect the correctness of their truth judgments for true and false political statements that were at odds with their political views. These results reveal the intricate and systematic ways in which political preferences are linked to the accuracy with which people assess their own truth discernment. More broadly, by identifying a specific political asymmetry-for discordant relative to concordant news-our findings highlight the role of metacognition in perpetuating and exacerbating ideological divides. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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检测错误信息的元认知洞察力的政治（a）对称性。


政治错误信息对全世界的民主国家构成重大威胁，常常引发对立政治团体之间的激烈争端。尽管它在选民知情和政治决策方面发挥着核心作用，但人们在区分准确的政治信息和虚假信息时如何意识到自己的对错却知之甚少。在这里，我们调查人们对自己发现政治错误信息的能力的元认知洞察力。我们使用了一项独特的纵向研究的数据，该研究跨越 6 个月的 12 波浪潮，调查了美国代表性样本 (N = 1,191)，了解网上传播最广泛的政治（错误）信息。利用信号检测理论方法来模拟元认知，我们发现政治左翼和政治右翼的人都意识到他们在所有新闻中区分准确的政治信息和虚假信息的能力。然而，当相关信息挑战共和党和保守派的意识形态承诺时，这种元认知洞察力远低于民主党和自由派。也就是说，鉴于共和党人和保守派的知识水平，他们的信心不太可能反映他们对与他们的政治观点不一致的真假政治言论的真相判断的正确性。这些结果揭示了政治偏好与人们评估自己的真理洞察力的准确性之间存在复杂而系统的联系。更广泛地说，通过识别特定的政治不对称性（相对于一致新闻的不一致），我们的研究结果强调了元认知在延续和加剧意识形态分歧方面的作用。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。